Seattle International film festival : France Best Winner !

The Golden Space Needle Award winners were announced at a ceremony on Sunday. More than 83,000 ballots were cast by SIFF audiences to determine the winner in six categories: Best Film, Best Documentary, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Short Film.With a magical blend of gravity and levity, director Mona Achache deftly brings Muriel Barbery’s widely-loved novel and its two intriguing and delightfully complicated characters to life. Lover of art and philosophy, 11-year-old Paloma (a precocious Garance Le Guillemic) is disenchanted with the hypocrisy she perceives in her immediate world and pledges to end her life before she herself falls victim to it—and by the date of her next birthday. With 165 days to go she commits to documenting her environment with her father’s High-8 camera. Through this unique lens, and with Paloma’s caustic, and often hilarious commentary as the soundtrack, we enter the cosmos of her upper-crust Parisian apartment building and, as third-party sleuths, glimpse the interior lives of the characters who inhabit it—in particular, grumpy, frumpy concierge, Renée Michel (the marvelous comedienne, Josiane Balasko).

When Paloma’s camera reveals an extensive secret library in Renée’s back room, and that the usually gruff matron reads Tolstoy to her cat, Paloma begins to understand that there are allies to be found beneath the prickliest of exteriors. And, when she notices that the new tenant, elegant widower Kakuro (Togo Igawa, Memoirs of a Geisha), is paying courtly attention to Reneé, Paloma sees a new mission ahead of her. As the unlikely friendship between this disparate trio deepens, Paloma’s own coming of age becomes a much less pessimistic prospect...for more information click here!